A recent extensive study by AI commerce firm Recomaze shows that AI-powered shopping assistants recommend only a small fraction of online stores when responding to consumer purchase-intent queries, leaving about 60% of stores unmentioned across a wide range of categories.
- 60% of ecommerce stores received zero AI recommendations in tests.
- Recommendations dispersed among over 50,000 brands, with few dominating.
- Product category and catalog readability strongly influence AI visibility.
What happened
Recomaze tested 58,320 purchase-intent queries across 9,720 ecommerce stores using Google Gemini AI, revealing a significant gap in AI-driven store recommendations. In 60% of the tests, these stores were not recommended at all, and overall only 14% of queries named the queried store directly. Instead, AI assistants either suggested competitors or gave no store recommendation.
The study found that AI’s product discovery outputs were spread across more than 50,000 distinct brands, not concentrated only among major retailers. For example, Etsy appeared in just 1.3% of recommendations, while smaller specialized brands like Bartesian outperformed giants like Walmart in some categories. This illustrates the long-tail dynamic of AI recommendations.
Why it matters
As shoppers increasingly rely on AI assistants to guide purchase decisions, the traditional online storefront visibility driven by Google search rankings is being disrupted. The AI recommendation layer acts as a new filter, deciding which stores consumers see in response to product queries and potentially bypassing countless ecommerce sites entirely.
The apparent exclusion of many stores is attributed to how these AI models interpret and trust product catalog data. Catalogs optimized for human readers and conventional search engines may not meet the AI’s criteria for clear, machine-readable product information, limiting visibility. Categories with visually-driven buying decisions such as apparel and home goods had especially high invisibility rates.
What to watch next
Monitoring how AI assistants evolve in product discovery will be crucial for online retailers aiming to maintain or increase visibility. Tools that enhance AI-readability of product catalogs could become essential for stores seeking to be recommended by AI shopping assistants like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.
The industry should also watch for expanded data on AI recommendation patterns across different AI models and varying queries, including brand searches. Understanding these patterns will be key to adapting ecommerce strategies to this emerging AI-driven marketplace layer where being named by the assistant may replace traditional search ranking.